Fresh Start

"This is a moment for the renewal of American leadership. One candidate has the credentials. Mrs Clinton has served as first lady, senator for New York and US secretary of state... Mr Trump deals in denigration not diplomacy. He has abused allies, threatening to remove east Asia’s nuclear umbrella, sideline Nato and unleash trade wars."

In a slap to the face of its Western friends, as the FT puts it, instead of visiting a Nato ally, Erdogan's first trip abroad since surviving last month’s coup attempt the Turkish president is going to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. As one Turkish diplomat in Moscow said: “Our relations with the US are the worst in 50 years . . . and that definitely makes engaging Russia an attractive option.” Needless to say, Putin will be most delighted by this development...

Wherever they go, whatever they do, ethics are trashed and suspicions of criminal conduct follow them like night follows day. It’s who they are and it’s self-delusional to believe another stint in the White House would make the Clintons better people. Power exacerbates rather than cures an absence of integrity. Yet there’s another dimension to their chronic crookedness. It is that, in addition to being personally corrupt, the Clintons are corrupters.

The overwhelming underlying principle that we see at work here is that centralization is dead, because the economy has perished. But that is something we can be sure no politician or bureaucrat or economist is willing to acknowledge. They’re all going to continue to claim that their specific theories and plans are capable of regenerating the growth the system depends on. Only to see them fail. It’s high time for something completely different, because we’re in a dead end street.

Apple has been told by Beijing's intellectual property regulator to stop sales of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in the city. The two iPhone models infringe on a Chinese patent for exterior design held by Shenzhen Baili for its 100C smartphone, the Beijing Intellectual Property Bureau wrote in a statement on its website

The bad news for Valeant shareholders just keeps coming. After repeatedly cutting its guidance in the past several months, earlier today VRX once again cut guidance dramatically, sending shares plunging by 10% in the premarket. In its just released Q1 results, which missed non-GAAP EPS expectations of $1.37 by 10 cents, the company took the knife to its latest set of full year 2016 projections.

"China must find a middle ground and determine which things can be imported but have to be secure and controllable; which things may be imported, digested and absorbed for re-innovation; which things can be developed in collaboration with others; and for which things we must rely on our own strength and indigenous innovation." - Xi Jinping

"We could lose a decade of economic growth in three or four years," one official exclaims, "in other words, a decade of growth would be lost during Dilma’s mandate if she continues on as president." This recession, and concurrent high inflation, has been magnified by the biggest scandal in political memory...“It is considered common sense now that she will be impeached. Only a miracle can save her. All the factors are pushing that way."

After a day of "rock solid" Lehman-isms, emergency bond buyback plans, and a stock price still unable to close green, Deutsche Bank is on the ropes (despite CNBC proclaiming that "it doesn't feel like a Lehman moment.") However, as dawn breaks across the motherland, something more insidious is breaking for Germany's largest bank. Deutsche faces an uphill task rescuing its stock from record lows, especially, as Reuters reports, a top 10 shareholder exclaims "investors have completely lost faith in the bank," and a fast recovery from this crisis was unlikely.

This morning, the headlines surrounding what's quickly mushroomed into a Mid-East melee are coming fast and furious and in the latest escalation, the Saudi foreign ministry says the kingdom will now cut all commercial ties with Iran.

With Puerto Rico missing a payment on a bond overnight "due to non-appropriation of funds" but denying that this constitutes anything close to a default, the territory may be about to retake the limelight as Greece is now "fixed." As Peter Schiff explains, this is far from over... As in Greece, the Puerto Rican economy has been destroyed by its participation in an unrealistic monetary system that it does not control and the failure of domestic politicians to confront their own insolvency. But the damage done to the Puerto Rican economy by the United States has been far more debilitating than whatever damage the European Union has inflicted on Greece. In fact, the lessons we should be learning in Puerto Rico, most notably how socialistic labor and tax policies can devastate an economy, should serve as a wake up call to those advocating prescribing the same for the mainland.

Every nation has a right to defend itself against attack – financial attack just as overt military attack. That is an essential element in the principle of self-determination. Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and other debtor countries have been under the same mode of attack that was waged by the IMF and its austerity doctrine that bankrupted Latin America from the 1970s onward. International law needs to be updated to recognize that finance has become the modern-day mode of warfare. Its objectives are the same: acquisition of land, raw materials and monopolies. A byproduct of this warfare has been to make today’s financial network so dysfunctional that nations need a financial Clean Slate.